Healing hands

When my 90-year-old father fell at home a few months ago, a trip to the emergency room revealed that he was shaken and dazed by the experience but not seriously injured. A follow-up visit to his clinic, however, turned into an unexpected piece of medical theater. The doctor entered the examining room with two lab-coated medical students in tow. From the threshold, he greeted my father, who was perched anxiously on the examining table, and then immediately turned to a computer in the corner of the room. After conferring with the students for a moment about the data on the screen, the physician looked toward my father. “Labs look OK. If you have any complications, give me a call.” Then, like white-winged waterfowl flapping away from a pond, the medicos were gone.